Wine and Communication

Few months ago, DiWineTaste has released a new polls service in its WEB site. We
did that because we think that listening to our reader's opinion is very
important to us. We introduced some polls about communication and wine, and in
January, we discovered interesting results. In first rank, at least up to now,
you readers have voted events and tasting, at the second place internet,
at the third enological guides and then visits to wine-cellars. These
results are important and show how the preferences about media, involved in
wine, have changed. The so called consumer awareness is more and more
discussed and it is not by chance if wine lovers want to know more about it, to
directly taste the product in occasion of enogastronomical or tasting events
about a specific subject. Media talk a lot about wine and producers frequently
debate about the numbers of events having the wine as a protagonist. Anyway,
more and more people, younger and older, travel many kilometers in order to go
to events, which give them the chance to taste their favorite wines as well as
discovering new ones.

The same consideration is true for the visits to wineries, which are getting
more and more popular in Italy. There are, for example, wine lovers from abroad,
which run across Italy by bus, in order to get to Sicily, with the specific
intent of visit just one winery. Are they wine fundamentalists? No, as it simply
is in our country as well as and abroad, the interest for the beverage of
Bacchus and the will to understand it better are increasing more and more.
Wineries are getting more and more organized, even by creating a real receptive
service, made by experienced people capable of speaking different languages.
Sometimes, the wineries give the chance, by paying an amount, to arrange a
lunch, inside the winery itself, with typical local dishes. Wine lovers, among
smell of wine and barrique, can experiment the synthesis between wine and
terroir, to say it the French way. Many guides suggest which wineries are
opened to visitors. And in Italy, there are many! Movies like Sideways,
which tells the story of two friends visiting wineries in California, has
created the fashion of going around wineries. Or events, such as the Wine
Day, organized by Movimento del Turismo del Vino (Organization for Wine
Tourism), have opened wineries to wine lovers while contributing to develop the
culture of wine.

We would however like to share a consideration with you: the second place of the
polls is occupied by internet in the ranking of the preferred media for learning
about wine. And we admit that, we are happy about this result, as we do our very
best every month in order to give you our best, to share information about wine
and other subjects about enogastronomy with you. Italy is among the countries in
which newspapers are read by few people and this also applies to wine magazines,
too. There surely are many reasons for this. The economical condition we are
passing through, forces people to save the money for the subscription to a
magazine or to buy it in the kiosk, because of its high cost. Or more simply, we
have no time to go to the kiosk and to buy the preferred magazine, because we
all are always in a hurry. Internet gives the chance, most of the times, to read
free magazines about wine. Internet is easy to use, most of the time providing
interactivity, such as our polls, guides and EnoGames, all being appreciated by
our readers. Our web site, in Italian and English, is read not only in Italy,
but also abroad, especially in the United States of America, Great Britain,
Germany, France, Spain, Canada, Australia, Japan and South Korea.

Wine is a very special product and communication about it is something of its
own. Communicating wine is not the same of communicating a toothpaste. And this
is not something clear to understand. According to some points of view,
communication about wine is very traditional even nowadays, and most of the
times it is simply too much! There are some communication media which are
scarcely considered for the communication of wine, and sometimes they are not
even considered at all. This is the case of cinema or television, for example.
Only few wines for daily consumption are advertised on TV, while we rarely see a
wine commercial at the cinema. Producers prefer to invest in communication on
other media, especially on specialized magazines and on the ones destined to
professionals (restaurants, wine-bars, pizza houses, hotels). Wine is
communicated by public relations activities, by means of events organization,
tasting, enogastronomical and cultural events. Moreover, producers usually meet
wine professionals in occasion of exhibitions. An example is Vinitaly - which is
organized in Verona, in April - the most important wine event in Italy, which
attracts people from all the country and wineries from all over the world.

A recent survey, made by the Italian press agency Ansa, put the attention on the
diminishing interest for daily newspapers, while internet is getting more and
more used for reading news. Although we are very sorry for the press, this seems
to be a realistic scene. The investments on communication by producers do not
take in consideration the trends about the fruition of communication media by
consumers. This happens because most of Italian producers do not have access to
data and researches or the chance to finance surveys, because they are too
expensive. Communication is one of the point of marketing, which, at least in
the wine field, is mainly done by intuition and not according to numbers and
trends, which are in the hands of big companies. In the wine field, it is very
difficult to see real marketing, because most of wine companies are not
structured with a specialized sector.

Today, many wine companies have a WEB site, but few take advantage of this
dynamic mean. Many WEB sites are static, without even considering the
characteristics this medium could offer, they are never updated or this rarely
happens. Few companies, on the contrary, use internet to continuously
communicate to their public (consumers, suppliers, buyers of great supermarkets
chains, prospects) and we are not talking about wine e-commerce only, which in
Italy does not take off, because buyers are afraid of using their credit cards
on the internet or simply because they are not accustomed to that. In Italy,
there are company web sites, very famous all over the world, which are not being
updated for many years. Even companies having financial and human resources to
do that, most of the times neglect this aspect. For small wine companies this is
more difficult, but sometimes, their web sites are up to date. Internet is a
medium offering huge potentialities and attract people of different ages, even
older ones, but it is necessary to use it with a precise communication strategy,
which is, most of the times, nonexistent. This is the real problem in the wine
business: most of the cases, the lack of a marketing strategy, which includes
the strategy of product, as well communication, distribution and price. There is
still too much instinct in this field and wineries are too traditional.

MailBox

In this column are published our reader's mail. If you have any comment or any
question or just want to express your opinion about wine, send your letters to
our editorial or fill in
the form available at
our site.

What is the governo toscano vinification system?

Paolo Vaccari -- Silea, Treviso (Italy)

The so-called governo alla toscana is an enological practice,
very used in the past for the production of Chianti, while today
there are few who use it. Technically speaking, it consists in
favoring a slow refermentation, by adding to the wine the must of
lightly dried grapes, belonging to the same harvest. After harvesting,
part of the grapes - usually the best - is dried in aerated
rooms. During December, after the first decanting, the dried
grapes are crushed and the must is added to the new wine, causing a
slow refermentation. This operation allows a longer keeping of the
lively character of the wine as well as its crispness, as well as
allowing the complete fermentation of sugars. Another similar
technique - called rigoverno - is generally done in springtime,
operation which gives the wine more color and richness of aromas.

What is the Guyot system?

Mario Silvestri -- Bologna (Italy)

Guyot is probably the most famous viticultural system, created by
Dr. Jules Guyot, developed in two methods, simple Guyot -
in short Guyot - and double Guyot. This viticultural
system offers many advantages, such as the simplicity in pruning and
harvesting - which it can be mechanized - ensures a good exposition
of the leaves, an appropriate density of plants and a good quality of
production. The system is realized by a proper method of pruning, in
which the old vine stock, called cut of the past, that
is the branch which bore the grapes for the last harvesting, is cut.
Then, two new vine stocks are chosen: the first - cut of the
present - destined to the production of grapes for the next
harvesting and properly cut to a determined number of buds the second
- called cut of the future - properly shortened to 2-3 buds,
which will become, after harvesting, the new cut of the present.

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